The 2017 breach, codenamed Vault 7, details how the CIA can take over iPhones through malware and turn smart TVs into surveillance devices and is believed to be the agency’s largest leak of classified documents.

Agents suspected Mr Schulte of distributing “national defence information” and told a court they had retrieved “NSA and CIA paperwork”, as well as electronic devices including a computer, tablet and phone, the New York Times reports.

However six months later in August, instead of charging him for the Vault 7 leak, US prosecutors indicted him on unrelated child pornography charges.